Israel prepares to receive six more Gaza hostages

Israel prepared on Saturday to receive six more hostages from Gaza in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners and detainees, after accusations over the return of a misidentified body this week threatened to derail a fragile truce.

The six, the last living hostages from a group of 33 due to be freed in the first stage of the ceasefire deal agreed last month, were expected to be handed over at around 8.30 a.m., according to officials from the militant group Hamas.

Four of the hostages, Eliya Cohen, 27, Tal Shoham, 40, Omer Shem Tov, 22, and Omer Wenkert, 23, were seized by Hamas gunmen during their attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. Another two, Hisham Al-Sayed, 36, and Avera Mengistu, 39, have been held by Hamas since they entered Gaza separately under unexplained circumstances around a decade ago.

In return, Israel is expected to release 602 Palestinian prisoners and detainees held in its jails in the latest stage of an exchange that has held up despite a series of problems that have come close to sinking it on different occasions.

Late on Thursday, Israel accused Hamas of violating the ceasefire by handing over an unidentified body instead of the remains of hostage Shiri Bibas that were due to be returned along with the bodies of her two small sons.

Hamas said her remains appear to have been mixed up with other human remains recovered from the rubble after an Israeli air strike that it said killed her and her two sons in November 2023.

On Friday, the group handed over another body, which Israeli forensic officials were preparing to investigate to confirm the identity.

Israeli hostage Shiri Bibas's community confirmed her death Saturday after new remains were returned from Gaza, as the seventh hostage-prisoner exchange under a fragile Gaza ceasefire was set to go ahead.

Four bodies were delivered and the identities of the Bibas boys and the other hostage, Oded Lifshitz, were confirmed.

But Israeli specialists said the fourth body was that of an unidentified woman and not Shiri Bibas, who was kidnapped along with her sons and her husband, Yarden, during the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.

Basem Naim, a member of the Hamas political bureau, said "unfortunate mistakes" could occur, especially as Israeli bombing had mixed the bodies of Israeli hostages and Palestinians, thousands of whom were still buried in the rubble.

"We confirm that it is not in our values or our interest to keep any bodies or not to abide by the covenants and agreements that we sign," he said in a statement.

The failure to hand over the correct body and the staged public handover of the four coffins on Thursday caused outrage in Israel and drew a threat of retaliation from Netanyahu.

"We will act with determination to bring Shiri home along with all our hostages - both living and dead - and ensure Hamas pays the full price for this cruel and evil violation of the agreement," he said in a video statement.

Hamas said in November 2023 that the children and their mother had been killed in an Israeli air strike. Ismail Al-Thawabta, director of the Gaza government media office, said Netanyahu "bears full responsibility for killing her and her children."

But the Israeli military said intelligence assessments and forensic analysis of the bodies of the Bibas children indicated that they were deliberately killed by their captors. Chief military spokesperson Daniel Hagari said the boys were killed by the militants "with their bare hands", but gave no details.

The U.N. Human Rights Office said it had no information of its own on the hostage deaths and called for an effective investigation into the causes.

"The return of the remains of the deceased is a basic humanitarian goal," the office said.

The incident underscored the fragility of the ceasefire agreement reached with U.S. backing and with the help of Qatari and Egyptian mediators last month.

'They make a joke of us'

Both Israel and Hamas have repeatedly accused the other of ceasefire violations, with Hamas threatening to delay the release of hostages over what it said was Israel's refusal to allow housing materials and other aid into Gaza, a charge Israel denied.

The Red Cross told Reuters it was "concerned and unsatisfied" that the handover of the bodies had not been conducted privately and in a dignified manner.

"It's like they make a joke of us," said 75-year-old Israeli Ilana Caspi. "We are so in grief and this is even more."

One of the main groups representing hostage families said it was "horrified and devastated" by the news that Shiri Bibas' body had not been returned, but called for the ceasefire to continue to bring back all 70 hostages still in Gaza.

"Save them from this nightmare," the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said in a statement.

Despite the outrage over Shiri Bibas, there was no indication that Israel would not take part in talks over a second phase of the ceasefire deal.

The Israel Hayom newspaper reported that Israeli negotiators were considering seeking an extension of the 42-day ceasefire, to delay moving to a second phase, which would involve talks over hard-to-resolve issues including an end to the war and the future of Hamas in Gaza.